Albion Online Development: Making the Frog Leap

Albion Online is going through a major phase of developmental and world updates during the beta. Programmers and game designers, you know how much love and effort goes into...

Lex
7 June,2016

Albion Online is going through a major phase of developmental and world updates during the beta. Programmers and game designers, you know how much love and effort goes into every tiny detail- from the unintrusive barrels usually found near taverns and, in this case, down to the smallest mobs.

Players will mostly likely run into hundreds of gracefully leaping frogs during their stay in the world of Albion.

Anything dynamic rendered into the world that is not static need three things for a visual interaction: the model, the skeleton, and the animation.

The basic model is just a game object whose individual parts (limbs, etc) cannot be manipulated because they haven’t been “created” or “assigned” yet.

Albion’s Art Director, Marcus Koch created the frog’s 3D model completely from scratch– he didn’t use any pre-existing assets or any sort of concept art to base the model on.

The skeleton is the literal bone structure of the static model. Joints and bones are assigned to certain parts of the model that can be manipulated during the animation. Ulrike steps in and the frog is ready to be passed on to Alexandra.

The now dynamic model is given animations by Alexandra manipulating each “body part” and telling it to play during a sequence- idle, attack, death, etc.

Each entry level mob and insignificant NPC takes teamwork and dedication. Regardless of what you are working on, you need to understand the entire process and adapt to what the team needs.

You can find more details about this mob’s development and other cool changes the devs are making at their official website here.

Alex is a university student and an avid gamer who has been freelance writing on a client basis since high school. He has written about exciting subjects like banking and pregnancy- topics he believes prepared him for the world of gaming journalism, along with his technical knowledge and skills like blowing into cartridges and memory cards if they don’t work.